


Moriarty's Shadow: The Chemist's Broken Heart

by EllenJoyce



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 13:51:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20390752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenJoyce/pseuds/EllenJoyce
Summary: Could Sherlock really leave John behind, believing Sherlock dead? No way.





	Moriarty's Shadow: The Chemist's Broken Heart

“If you dare proceed before my tactical team is on scene...” The angier Mycroft became, the more clipped and precise his diction. 

Sherlock cut him off. “You’ll do what? Kill me? Too late, I’m already dead.” 

Waiting for Mycroft’s gorillas with guns? Unacceptable. He’d raced the villain to his lair and won. The abandoned smelter crouched between a greasy, sluggish river and abandoned railroad tracks he’d followed on foot for miles. The Chemist would be here before nightfall, and all Sherlock’s questions would be answered.

With Mycroft still sputtering orders and threats, Sherlock turned off his phone and slipped inside the abandoned smelter. He needed data. There were so many questions.

Why had Moriarty’s prime poisoner abducted the cherished mistress of the Serbian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs?

Why was he now snatching street people? Why was he killing those street people in a violent frenzy after he flooded their blood and flesh with a unique psychoactive drug? And why did forensics find saliva from the missing mistress in bite marks on the victims?

Too many unknowns. They marched through the brain like dissatisfied toddlers beating soup pots with wooden spoons. And at his side stood no unwavering presence, no calmly ironic voice soothing his anxiety, no man making Sherlock courageous and brilliant by loyaly insisting that Sherlock was courageous and brilliant. 

But Sherlock didn’t let himself think of John Watson anymore. Not for long, anyway.

Inside the smelter, the stale air seemed colder. Rust mottled the hulking pressurized tank in the center of the space, iron pipes curving down like spider’s legs, the gauges broken-faced and blinded.

The only thing not covered in rust were the metal cuffs roped to the base of a brittle safety railing in front of the tank. Reddish-brown splotches stained the concrete floor near the cuffs. Six meters out from the cuffs there was a one-meter square cleaner than the rest of the ruined floor. 

Sherlock visualized a body, naked at least from the waist up. The bites had all broken the skin above the waist. A thin body, ribs exposed and filthy from street living -- all the victims were social cast-offs. No one cared that they died, and only Sherlock cared why and how they died. Their bodies had been dumped in various places in a twenty mile radius, no forensic clues but the hostage woman’s saliva, the bite marks and the mysterious psychoactive drug. Mycroft’s people had been working feverishly to break the formula, but the Chemist had been Moriarty’s most prized poisoner for a reason. So far they’d only uncovered tenuous evidence that the drug had been designed to work specifically on DNA markers in the captive mistress.

He could not imagine exactly what happened in this cold, rusted space, other than at some point the hostage mistress bit the victim -- more than once, and not shyly -- and then the victim was killed by blunt force.

Sherlock climbed up the pressurized tank, his footfalls raising low, echoing thumps. He hoisted himself up into the exposed metal rafters to wait. Either the Chemist would arrive and display all the answers in situ, or Mycroft’s goons would alert the Chemist his lair was compromised and Sherlock would need to start the investigation over, from scratch, with his quarry on the run.

Thankfully, the Chemist arrived first. As the afternoon light began to fade, he dragged in the half-conscious body of a man. The hostage mistress trailed subserviently behind him.

Sherlock assumed mind-control drugs would complicate the woman’s captivity, considering the Chemist’s expertise. The woman looked thinner than in the photos provided by the Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs, but otherwise undamaged. She was elvish and ethereal, exuding waifish vulnerability that excited some men. Sherlock found it contemptible. Her large blue eyes were glassy, her affect dull, and she carried a leather pack. She seemed absolutely unaware of the opportunity for escape as the Chemist pulled the shirt off the semi-conscious victim and cuffed his wrists to the safety rail.

The victim’s torso was decorated with military tattoos: a forgotten veteran of the Serbian wars, a warrior defeated by PTSD and heroin.

The Chemist was unnaturally tall, gaunt, like a preying mantis. He wore neat brown coveralls, blue latex gloves, square-lensed eyeglasses. His chin and nose and elbows and knees looked sharp enough to puncture skin. He radiated a palpable sense of anticipation. 

From the briefcase the hostage extracted a tufted cushion, placed it on the floor. She tugged off her boots and shrugged out of her long jacket. Underneath she was naked. She knelt slowly, solemnly, as if starting an important ritual. She sat back on her heels, head bowed.

The Chemist’s anticipation, the woman’s willing nudity, the lack of John -- no, no thinking of John! -- put Sherlock’s nerves on edge. There was something decidedly sensual building here, where past evidence confirmed blood would be spilled and a life taken.

From the pack the Chemist took a vintage crystal bottle, delicate as anything on a ladies’ boudoir table. The hostage -- he could not recall her name, Olivia and Olivette or something -- tipped her head up, and the Chemist carefully dropped liquid into her eyes.

So not just the victim was drugged for this experience. The hostage was, too. Perhaps one substance guaranteed her compliance and passivity. This other substance...what would it do to allow her to sink her teeth into this bound, filthy stranger?

Now would be a genuinely golden moment for Mycroft’s gorillas with guns to crash the party. Sherlock had no sidearm. Mycroft hadn’t given him one, nor given him the opportunity to procure one illegally before dumping him outside the Chemist’s lair. Besides, guns were John’s --

He shut down that thought just as the Chemist drew a huge hypodermic from the pack, some kind of relic from the great war, thick needle, plunger hovering above a yellow viscous liquid that refracted the weak light filtering through the broken windows.

Sherlock did not look away when the Chemist stabbed the needle into the victim’s chest. The victim jerked fully awake, gasping, as the poison flooded his heart. A sharp scent, like freshly baked rye bread with a dead mouse inside, filled Sherlock’s nose. His eyes prickled.

The hostage threw back her head and rose up on her knees, her breasts rising and falling more quickly. Her wide eyes focused on the victim. The poison’s smell had woken something inside her.

The victim looked around wildly, pulling against his cuffs. His feet scrabbled against the uneven concrete floor. His mouth hung open as he panted. Sherlock could taste his fear on the cold, stale air.

The Chemist pulled peeled back his latex gloves and rolled off his brown coveralls. He kept on his boots, but otherwise was naked. His skin was frog-belly white, knees and elbows crusted with dry skin, his chest hairless and his nipples, thick and already hard. So was his penis, skinny and long as the rest of him.

Where the hell was Mycroft’s tactical team?

The victim rattled his cuffs, shouting hoarsely, feet kicking hard, dislodging a flurry of rust from the ruined metal framing above Sherlock’s head.

Specks hit his eyes and he reached up to rub them. More rust fell, and it lodged in his nose and he sneezed. Sherlock sneezed. The sudden, wet noise echoed off the pressurized metal tank.

The hostage didn’t look up, but the victim and the Chemist did.

“Help me!” shouted the victim, thrashing against his bonds.

The Chemist gave an inarticulate roar, far too deep for his narrow chest to produce. Sherlock scrambled down, keeping the tank between him and Moriarty’s poisoner. But the Chemist was fast and by the look on his face furious that his ritual was interrupted. He grabbed the collar of Sherlock’s coat -- he almost slithered by -- and hauled Sherlock back into his sharp elbow. The crack of bone on bone hit right behind Sherlock’s left ear. Stars blurred his vision. A bony knee in his kidney put him down. A kick in the ribs sent him rolling. A stomp on his head made the world spin and fade and where in the holy blood fuck were Mycroft’s gorrillas?

Sherlock tensed for what he knew could be the blow that killed him. All his internal controls failed and John Watson’s memory filled him: his dour expression that said you idiot, his smell of just-swallowed whisky and second-hand smoke and Mrs. Hudson’s lavender soap, the thick graying hair Sherlock had never ever touched...

The hostage woman whined, a needy, high-pitched sound. Sherlock heard retreating bootfalls and he forced his eyes open even as he commanded his muscles to slither him closer to the rusted double doors and escape.

His vision was still blurred, but there was no denying what happened next. Just as the Chemist returned to stand by the victim, the mistress lunged forward and threw herself on top of the victim’s bound body. She locked her legs around one of his flailing ones, and Sherlock’s stomach lurched because her spine’s sinuous writhe and her hip thrusts made it clear that whatever was happening to her, it was profoundly erotic. The victim screamed and the hostage reared up, grinding her hips down. Her mouth was bloody, her jaw working, her throat swallowing.

The drug. The drug in the victim wasn’t for the victim. The drug in the victim was for the hostage mistress.

The Chemist groaned in a way that raised Sherlock’s hackles. He’d taken himself in hand and was watching the violence and stroking himself roughly. The hostage reached out to the Chemist. Sherlock could only see her profile, and even with his wavering focus there was no denying the need, the passion, the hunger, on her face.

The hostage put one hand on the Chemist’s penis, and he put one hand on her breast. They shared a grip on a metal pipe and together slammed it into the bound victim’s face.

And that was the moment Mycroft’s goons stormed in. Their heavy boots caught Sherlock on the temple and he rolled away, stars bursting behind his eyes. Voices shouted. A woman’s scream rose like a terrified dove. A gun boomed. Metal shards rained down. Sherlock curled in a ball, his arms over his head. More gunfire. Another scream. Then the roof gave up and fell all over them.

***

And so here he was again. Drunk again. Just before dawn, Sunday. No traffic outside St. Barts. He stayed across the street because LaStrade told him the last time he’d let Watson wither in the bloody drunk tank.

Watson remembered the humiliation: LeStrade looming over him, a look of uncomprehending horror on his face. Watson, laying without shirt or shoes on the sidewalk paver that killed Sherlock Holmes. 

“And where the fuck are your shoes, do you even know?” LeStrade had hauled him off in his own private car, delivered John to his squalid basement one-room. “You can’t be doing this anymore, John. Get a fucking grip.”

He’d never found those shoes. Or his shirt. He hadn’t really been sober since, either. He really hadn’t been sober before that. He was really quite drunk now, but there wasn’t enough whiskey in the world, in the history of the world, to keep his blood from running cold, looking at that patch of sidewalk. 

How had he lost his shirt that night? Oh shit, yes, he wanted to put his heart against the sidewalk where he swore he could still smell Sherlock’s blood. But he’d just scraped his nipples and that hurt enough to make him cry. Christ he got maudlin when he got too drunk. 

If he took his shirt off now, John felt like his skin would come off with it. He’d take off his clothes and his skin would rip right off with the fabric, then his muscles would uncoil and his blood vessels would unravel, his entrails would plop out and he’d be nothing but a hollow skeleton.

It was such a horrible and horribly accurate image that John laughed. It sounded maniacal. With an echo. Christ, he was drunk.

“Dr. Watson?”

Where’d this one come from, all black suited and leather gloved? A big goon thug if there ever...hold up. Where’d the big black SUV come from?

“John?”

John tilted forward, trying to focus. “What the hell? Mycroft?”

“You’re drunk.”

Well no shit. John tried to say you’re a judgmental prick but something burned against his neck and the curtain went down, hard.

***

“John. John Watson. Are you with me?”

Mycroft’s sharp voice flipped a switch in John’s brain. It was worse than being born. One moment, nothingness. The next, sunlight and movement, bumpy road, oh Christ. He put his hand over his mouth, swallowing convulsively, leaning his head back against the leather car seat.

“The drug we used to bring you to consciousness isn’t pleasant, but neither at present is the world. Are you listening, Doctor?”

As if there was a choice. Through one barely cracked eye John saw he was in the backseat of a limousine. Outside, fresh snow reflected cruelly bright sunshine. 

“Believe me, if it weren’t the last option you wouldn’t be here. But killing the Chemist’s hostage put us all in bitterly precarious danger. Completely unanticipated, that he’d enslaved her with his own hypnogogic concoction. She’d gone from kidnapped hostage to willing partner, you see, and we killed her.”

Watson wished he couldn’t see because the light stabbed right through his eye sockets to strafe his brain. Wait. Was that street sign in Cyrillic?

“The Chemist has already taken his vengeance upon the Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs, and during those unfortunate events the DPM became...gregarious. So now we are at grave risk.”

The car slowed and John was able to focus. It stopped in a crumbling alleyway. There were squat brick houses, windows broken or boarded. Graffiti in Cyrillic, angry black angles and anarchy symbols. Pigeons strutted and a skinny cat slunk around concrete rubble that had fallen from a second story wall.

A black gloved, black suited brute opened the door and dragged Watson out of the comfortable back seat and into the too bright sun and the too cold air. He pushed a key ring into John’s hand and pointed to one of the taller houses, where the door was still intact behind a metal gate.

“Whatever he saw rendered him non-functional, and he’s going to get us both killed, John.” Mycroft, leaning out of the back seat, gave John a distasteful glare. “Do whatever it is you do for him. The Chemist must be located and neutralized.” 

The brute got into the limo in John’s place. The door closed with a solid thunk and the sleek black car drove off. Sunshine bounced from the tinted back window into John’s eyes, but he didn’t even blink. Mycroft’s penultimate sentence rolled through his brain.

Do whatever it is you do for him.

Those words echoed, then everything went silent. Not even a heartbeat in his ears. Just that word, not even audible but visible. It loomed over him, stretching up into the sky.

HIM

It teetered. There could be only one HIM.

It came down hard, shattering the breathless silence. His heart hammering in his throat, John ran to the door.

Could it really be, Sherlock, could it really really….?

His hand shook so badly he fumbled the key ring. It dropped at his feet and for a moment John stood there, panting and shaking. He leaned his forehead against the cool metal grating.

Mycroft was a big enough bastard to lie about this, just to make John perform the way Mycroft needed. And there was no possible way Sherlock... No possible way. So much blood on the sidewalk. John watched Sherlock fall. He’d heard bones breaking.

Oh that was a memory he never let out of the dark in his mind, and it immediately reduced him to grinding his knuckles into his eyes to push back the rush of tears. His throat was too tight. He couldn’t swallow; he couldn’t breathe. Any moment he’d start hyperventilating and pass out in this alley somewhere in Eastern Europe. 

If Sherlock was alive, came down and found John fainted outside his door...John would die of the humiliation. Sherlock would never stop with the jokes. No, it couldn’t be that way.

With a deep breath John crouched down, retrieved the key ring. He put on his soldier-self like a pair of gloves: shoulder square, spine straight, eyes forward, no thinking just doing. 

The lock on the gate turned. There was a lock on the door, too. He started shaking again when he went inside. He closed the door and leaned his back against it and just counted his breaths.

Counted the steps going up, too. A narrow hallway, a naked bulb hanging from a dangling socket. An open doorway at the top. 

The faint smell of tobacco.

Bloody hell. Fuck. Shit.

If one person on the planet could arrange for Sherlock’s faked death, it would be Mycroft.

Do whatever it is you do for him.

A rush of dizzy motion, and he was at the top of the stairs. His shin smarted. He’d bashed them running up the stairs, though the memory wasn’t clear. It was like his body had taken over to do what was necessary while his mind boggled and stuttered and his heart huddled behind his ribs, too afraid even to hope. Because if Sherlock wasn’t alive in there it would be like losing him again, bones breaking and blood all over, and it would kill John. He could not survive that again. He didn’t want to survive that again.

Shoulders back, spine straight, unclench those fists, soldier, do your duty.

Two steps, three. He crossed the threshold into a filthy little walk up. Just one long space, a dripping sink and a counter with a hot plate, a rickety wooden table with just one spindle-back chair. Yellow tile bumped up against a worn green rug trying to define the different use of space. No TV, no radio. No window. Just a long sleeper sofa against the far wall, two low tables at either end. On the closest table there was a spoon and candle, a syringe and a leg from a pair of women's nylon stockings. On the sofa, unconscious, was Sherlock Holmes.

John’s legs buckled and he hit his knees. He bent nearly in half, his forehead touching the foul green carpet. He couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t think. His heart hammered so hard it turned his brain to a field of white static. He recognized the echo of his shout, inarticulate release of months of forlorn loneliness and regret, months of turning into a ghost at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

The sofa springs squeaked, loud in the breathless silence after John’s shout. John raised his head to see Sherlock sitting up and staring at him. Humiliation flooded through John, that Sherlock would see him so maudlin, so out of control. He couldn’t stop shaking and he felt the tears on his face. Sherlock had to see. Sherlock saw it all. 

Sherlock smirked and rubbed his eyes. His hair stood up in greasy clumps. Stubble shadowed his chin and cheeks. His nails were ragged and dirty. But his voice was still precise and cutting as it always was. “And now I hallucinate. Splendid.”

Frozen on his knees, John gaped. “What?”

Sherlock threw up his hands. “Visual and auditory hallucinations. I never do things by half measure.”

God what a drama queen. John felt himself grin, felt all the pieces of his heart not come together, but stop cutting him with their broken edges. The great master of deduction Sherlock Holmes thought John was a figment of his imagination. John would never let him live this down.

The thought shot through him like an electric shot. Live this down. Sherlock was not dead. He was bloody well not...a burst of fury pushed him onto his feet, his hands balled into fists but still shaking. Would he ever stop shaking?

“You bastard, you aren’t dead.”

Sherlock scratched at his hair with all ten fingers, then stretched his legs and, yawning, scratched his balls. He got up, unsteady on his feet, then shambled to the hot plate, right past John as if he wasn’t even there. As if John hadn’t spent months suffering because of Sherlock’s lies, Mycroft’s lies, months and fucking months of dying inside.

He thinks you’re imaginary, what rationality John had left told him, it’s stupid to get upset but John was more than upset. Insulted was what he was. Even if he was a goddamn hallucination Sherlock owed him more than his turned back while he put on water for tea.

“Why did you do this to me? Why did you lie?” 

Sherlock’s shoulders hunched. “Shut up.”

“You left me believing you were...goddamn it Sherlock. Do you even know ...?” John bit down on his tongue. Sherlock didn’t think he was real now, but he’d find out his mistake soon enough. And he surely wasn’t going to say anything like Do you even know how it almost killed me?

The kettle sang, and Sherlock poured. 

John stormed back to the small table and sat in the only chair. “Make me a cup. You owe me that at least.”

Sherlock threw the cup against the wall. Water splattered. The tea bag clung to the rough drywall, then slowly slipped down.

“I owe you nothing, John Watson. I have paid the highest price I can to keep you safe and alive.” Sherlock pointedly did not look at John when he spoke. “If there is a debt owed, it isn’t me to you and why the bloody fuck am I explaining myself to a fucking figment of my fucking imagination?”

By the last three words Sherlock was shouting. He stood there, quivering all over with an emotion John could not quite categorize: rage, frustration or maybe guilt? It ought to be guilt, though he didn’t think Sherlock even capable of remorse.

“You didn’t even think what it might do to me, thinking you dead?” Still, John had to try to get some kind of self-recrimination out of the bastard. He needed Sherlock to feel something that showed he understood he’d almost killed John, that it would have been better to kill John than push him into that drunken stupor of a half-life…

Sherlock said nothing. He straightened his spine and opened the refrigerator. With a bottle of dark foreign beer in his hand instead of a cup of tea, Sherlock kept his eyes on the floor as he walked across the tile, onto the carpet. John assumed he would head for the couch. John was sitting in the chair, after all. But Sherlock didn’t think he was real, and John felt angry and perverse enough not to move. He let Sherlock plunk right down in his lap.

What he didn’t plan on doing was grabbing Sherlock around the chest and locking him in place when Sherlock shouted his surprise and tried to get up.

“No you fucking don’t.” John ground the words out between his teeth as Sherlock struggled to get away. “How could you do that to me, you bastard?”

“How did you get here?” Sherlock wrenched hard and pulled out of John’s grip. He spun around on his feet and stared at John with wide eyes. Then they narrowed. “Mycroft.”

John sat there, watching Sherlock follow the thread of his own question and totally ignore what John needed to know. Something inside John snapped, and he didn’t realize what he was doing until he was hurtling through the air. He knocked Sherlock onto his back and held down his shoulders, so John could put his face in Sherlock’s and demand again, “How could you do that to me?”

Sherlock winced and turned his head. “You haven’t brushed your teeth in what smells like a month.”

“That’s accurate, actually.” John grabbed Sherlock’s hair and banged his head off the floor. “I’ve been pretty much pissed to the moon since you died in front of me!” John banged Sherlock’s head again. “And, you smell like shit yourself Mr. Druggie. What’s that about? Hmmmmm?”

“Let me up!”

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you all over again right here,” John slammed Sherlock's head against the floor again, “right now, you utter---”

“Well.”

Mycroft’s scathing tone froze John. Sherlock went silent and still under him.

“I’m glad this worked out. I’ll be back in three hours. For God sakes, both of you get clean. It smells like a zoo in here.” He tossed a black duffel onto the floor, and with his own particular flourish, disappeared down the stairs.

***

“I propose a detente.”

“I propose you choke on your tongue.”

They were both clean and dressed and smelling human, but John still boiled. How could he do it? How could he? He had been duped by someone he considered his best friend, left to die inside for months, until Mycroft kidnapped him because it suited his mechanisms and didn’t have the decency to explain anything before throwing himself into a world where Sherlock wasn’t dead.

He’d be boiling for a bloody long time.

They stood together in the narrow kitchen, facing off over a pot of tea they finally managed to make. The lights flickered and hummed.

“John…”

John held up his hand, stop, and he had to close his eyes. Sherlock’s voice actually saying his name, the gentle expression he always used when gaming John into doing something that was so deeply against his own interests. It was too much. 

“Mycroft was not wrong,” Sherlock’s tone indicated how sour those words tasted, “when he recognized I need your assistance.”

“You should’ve both thought that through before you let me believe you were dead.”

Sherlock didn’t respond, and after as long as he could stand with his eyes closed and having no idea what was going on -- did the bastard walk out -- John opened his eyes and glared.

Sherlock smiled at him, rueful and ironic, smiling like any other option would hurt too much. “I…” The smile faded. “Moriarty had embedded mechanisms to assure your death if I did not take my own life. I would not risk you so.”

John wasn’t buying it. “So you thought I’d be safe believing you dead. That’s rich.”

Sherlock blinked and his brows drew together.

What a bloody fucking idiot. John threw up his hands, refusing to admit that believing Sherlock dead was killing him more certainly than any trap Moriarity could have laid. “Mycroft doesn’t value my life as much as you do, then?”

Confusion coalesced into anger. “My brother values his own aims and goals above all else, and will use anyone to get what he thinks he needs.”

“And what is it he thinks he needs with me?”

Sherlock’s anger slowly evaporated. His expression unclenched from anger. His shoulders slumped. John’s own anger cooled, seeing Sherlock so disturbed.

“The Chemist. Moriarity’s poisoner.” Sherlock left the kitchen to collapse onto the sofa. He put his tea on the side table and rested his head in his hands.

John followed slowly, and he sat in the rickety ladder-back chair. “You needn’t put on this show, Sherlock.” Christ, it felt so incredibly good to say that name and not have it tear at his throat. “I’m here. You know I’ll help.”

“I wish it were a show.” Sherlock spoke from behind his hands.

John rolled his eyes. “With you everything’s a show.”

Sherlock jerked slightly, as if the words hit him physically. He leaned back and stretched. “I suppose I deserve that.” He kept his eyes on the ceiling. 

Neither spoke for long enough for John to get uncomfortable. He was just staring -- he’s alive. He didn’t want to, but couldn’t stop himself. Shifting in his chair, he prompted, “The Chemist. The poisoner.”

Sherlock drew in a deep breath. When he spoke he kept his head tilted up and his eyes away from John. “He kidnapped the mistress of a Serbian official.”

“Serbia? Mycroft brought me to Serbia? Christ!” Why it seemed so outrageous, John wasn’t sure. The cyrcillic alphabet, the bombed-out buildings. Still. To hear it spoken so casually, hey, you were in London and now you’re in Serbia, made it all too real. All of it. Serbia. Sherlock. Something tightened in John’s chest.

Sherlock waved a hand, as if being on a different continent without consent was nothing to worry about. “The Chemist retained the mistress as a hostage, but he never asked for any ransom. He just started abducting homeless people, and we didn’t know why. Until five days ago.” He frowned. “I think five days. I haven’t been entirely lucid.”

The details of the case gave John a focus other than the building pressure in his chest. His heart felt constricted. Blood hissed in his ears. “Why the homeless people? Why the mistress?”

Sherlock put a hand over his eyes. “John, it was the most brutal, most depraved thing I’d ever witnessed.”

Considering all that Sherlock had seen, John knew that was saying something. “Mycroft said it knocked you back. What you saw.”

“What knocked me back was his goon squad. Kicked me in the head when they stormed the Chemist’s hideout. The Chemist got away.”

“The mistress didn’t?” What had Mycroft told him? She went from hostage to willing accomplice, and we killed her.

“The Chemist took her corpse.”

“What about the homeless…?”

Sherlock stood up suddenly and began pacing. Into the kitchen, back again across the carpet. “The Chemist is a genius with poisons, but apparently an inspired genius with psychoactive substances.” He clipped out the words with no emotion. “He’d enslaved her with his drugs. And he injected the homeless victims with another one. One...for her.”

John leaned forward, not following the details. 

Sherlock took a quick look at his face -- the first time since they’d regrouped in the kitchen that he’d looked at John squarely -- and shook his head. “The Chemist made that girl his completely, he made murder part of the sex act, and we killed her. He already killed the Sebian official.”

“And the Serbian official ratted you and Mycroft out.”

“It was highly amusing to watch Mycroft practically shit himself with fear.” Sherlock’s tone had dropped a register, almost a growl. 

“You aren’t afraid?”

Sherlock stopped his pacing at the edge of the kitchen tile, his back to John. “I’m tired.”

And in that moment it hit John with the clarity of a lightning bolt. Mycroft didn’t just fear the Chemist’s revenge. He feared Sherlock was ready to open his arms to it. Do what it is you do for him. 

John’s anger folded up on itself, turned round into its flip side. He’d been so afraid that Sherlock didn’t care how John suffered, he hadn’t thought how Sherlock might’ve been hurting. It wasn’t an easy thought. Being furious that Sherlock didn’t care seemed a far more comfortable feeling than seeing Sherlock work alone to keep John safe. So much easier to be angry. But Sherlock stood there, his shoulders tense, his back straight, his hands clenched into fists. He stood there not dead and in that moment, John cared about nothing else.

He stood beside Sherlock, not looking up at him, giving him the privacy of his expression. He put his hand on Sherlock’s forearm. “I’ll be careful.” The words came out strong and clear, the unspoken ringing through them even more clearly: But I’m not leaving.

“What if I can’t keep you safe?” Sherlock’s whisper was so insubstantial, John wouldn’t have heard it if they weren’t standing shoulder to shoulder.

“You always did. You will.” John let Sherlock go and jostled him with his elbow. “I’m not entirely helpless, you know. I’ve taken care of myself in war zone.” He detected rebuke in his tone. He hadn’t meant to put it there, but Sherlock certainly earned it. He looked up, expecting a withering look or maybe a smile.

But Sherlock looked at him intently, emotions in his eyes John had never seen there before. His heart constricted again, and his throat closed up in something like and not like fear. He became acutely aware of how close they stood. The hair on his arms, on the back of his neck, shivered.

“John Watson.” Sherlock swallowed, then the unfamiliar look turned overbearing and haughty and painfully familiar. “Don’t die.” 

John laughed, both at the irony and to defuse the tension between them. “Sherlock Holmes, don’t die again.” 

The minute the words left him he knew they were a mistake. His eyes blurred and Christ he was going to cry right here and Sherlock would never let him forget it.

Thankfully, Mycroft burst in, all faked congeniality and brittle false pleasure. “The home team back together again.”

Sherlock’s attention went to Mycroft. His eyes narrowed. John stepped out of the way and did absolutely nothing when Sherlock cold-cocked his brother on the jaw. Mycroft spun around, went down and didn’t move.

“How have you never done that before?” John asked, in command of his usual tone.

“It felt delightful.”

“May I kick him?”

“That’s probably too much.” Sherlock gave him a grin. “More tea until he wakes up?”

“Sounds lovely.”

And just like that, the home team really was back on the field.

***

Once Mycroft woke up, he stuffed them in the back seat of the huge black car crouched along the broken sidewalk and didn’t speak for a full hour. He just sat there, face pinched into a sneer. He refused to look at Sherlock. Sherlock looked out the window, even though it was dark and they were driving through monotonous fields of snow. The ass end of Serbia, John supposed. And he was stuck between it and the Holmes brothers’ cold war.

Finally the boiling silence became too much to bear. He had, after all, been snatched from the alternative London reality where Sherlock was dead, and tossed into the Sherlock’s alive Serbian danger zone of the Chemist. Whom he knew next to nothing about.

John cleared his throat. He aimed his words at Mycroft, but both Holmes brothers tensed. “Do you have any idea what this Chemist plans next?”

Mycroft shifted in his seat and rolled his eyes. “I told you to brief him.”

After a beat of changed silence, Sherlock turned his head to John. “I can only presume the Chemist intends to complete his revenge.” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed and though he still looked at John it was clear he aimed his words at Mycroft. “He took all ten fingers and toes from the Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs.” Sherlock blinked. “And his manhood.”

Mycroft recrossed his legs, scowling. He spoke pointedly to John. “We believe the Chemist is luring us into a trap. We intend to use Sherlock as bait, and turn the trap around on him.”

“What?” John’s heart jumped to his throat. The idea of Sherlock in danger once was commonplace, normal, expected. But now, it filled him with panic. “No. He can’t.”

Mycroft’s brows lifted. “I can’t, certainly.”

“Why the hell not?” John didn’t care if Mycroft died in a fire, if it meant Sherlock would go on being alive, right here, John beside him.

Sherlock patted John’s arm. “I made a promise, John, same as you.”

John turned to stare him down, burning bright with the fury. “You’ve lied before.”

The weight of the words, the enormity of Sherlock’s lie, filled the car and displaced all the air.

Mycroft clucked his tongue like a schoolmarm. “You’ll just have to trust each other.”

“So long as I never have to trust you,” John snapped back.

Mycroft’s face pinched tight. “The plan is set. Play your part.”

John sank back in the plush leather seats, his face throbbing with fury and humiliation. His muscles shook with the need to strike out at Mycroft, cause some pain to ease his own.

Sherlock leaned into him, a warm pressure on his shoulder. “Be easy, John.” He whispered so lightly John didn’t think Mycroft could hear, and Mycroft didn’t even try to, as if anything Sherlock could say to John was beneath Mycroft to bother. “Remember how frightened he is.”

As if John wasn’t frightened as well. He turned his head, not realizing how close Sherlock was. Their foreheads bumped. John didn’t pull away, and neither did Sherlock. Sherlock’s hand was still on John’s arm. 

For the space of three deep breaths, John found himself transfixed by Sherlock’s open expression, the frank honesty in his eyes. 

“Stay with me, John.”

And John recalled that whatever Sherlock had witnessed, it had frightened him right into sticking a needle in his arm. 

“Of course.” John forced up a smile. “Of course, yes.”

“Of course.” Sherlock’s smirk was full of the regret John had been looking for earlier. Fear of whatever the Chemist had done, fear of losing John. When was the last time Sherlock had really rested? For the six months John had been drunk and dying inside, Sherlock had been throwing himself against Moriarty’s secret army alone. 

John slipped his arm from under Sherlock’s hand, gripped Sherlock’s upper arm, shook him slightly. “Of course.”

Sherlock leaned away and John saw Mycroft looked embarrassed and uncomfortable now. Sherlock didn’t move so far away that his shoulder didn’t bump John’s when the car cornered. Mycroft kept his gaze down in his lap, apparently fascinated by his gloved hands.

Thirty minutes of silence, and the barren snowfields gave way to a comparatively prosperous town. The sidewalks were intact. The streetlights worked. Signs glowed in windows of shops and restaurants and bars. 

“The Chemist has kidnapped another woman,” Sherlock said suddenly in the silence. “I don’t think he has any plans to use her like he did the Foreign Minister’s mistress. I think he’s just waving a red flag in front of the bull, knowing we’ll race here to save an innocent from some terrible fate.”

The sourness in Sherlock’s tone told John the kidnapped woman was probably already beyond saving, one way or the other. None of this felt good. None at all. And he couldn’t talk to Mycroft yet or he’d be overcome again with rage. So he asked Sherlock, “How can you be sure the Chemist will try to kidnap you to take revenge? How do you know he won’t just shoot you or stab you right on the street?” To his humiliation, his voice started shaking towards the end.

“He’s a poisoner by trade,” Mycroft sneered. “Haven’t you been listening?”

John closed his eyes and counted to ten. By the time he risked opening them again, the car was gliding to a stop in the basement of a poorly-lit parking garage.

Mycroft handed him a nine millimeter handgun and an extra clip. The weight of it in his hand as he safety-checked it made his bones feel more solid. 

“I remind you, Sherlock, that we have no interest in recovering this man alive. He has no value as a source of intelligence.” He gave John a chilly look. “Shoot to kill.”

Mycroft offered them both burner cell phones. John pocketed it, and when he got out of the car, tucked the pistol in his waistband. The jacket Mycroft provided was loose enough to hide the bulge.

John heard Mycroft draw breath to say something, but whatever it might have been, Sherlock slammed the door on it.

The beast of a car rumbled away, leaving John again on an unfamiliar street in the cold, this time far past midnight. But at least he was armed. And he wasn’t alone. “What’s the plan?”

Sherlock tugged on his gloves and turned up his collar. “I will make myself available for kidnapping. You will be my shadow and save me.”

“Marvelous plan.” John felt like one faint star in the whole night sky. “No pressure on me at all.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“I’m still a bit rattled by the dead-not-dead development.” John clenched his fists and glared, expecting some glib and mildly hurtful reply. Counting on it, actually, to light his fuse and let anger push him past fear.

Instead, Sherlock put his hands on John’s shoulders. There was an expression on Sherlock’s face John had never seen. Not that elusive regret. Something intense and almost intrusive, reaching down through John’s eyes to set a hook deep in his guts.

“Thank you. For being here.” 

In Sherlock’s tone John heard the unspoken, how it would have been entirely understandable if John opted out of Sherlock’s partnership, Sherlock’s friendship. Perhaps understandable to Sherlock, but inconceivable to John. How could Sherlock not know that? More than he wanted to see Sherlock regret lying about his death, John wanted to know that when he said yes of course, he meant yes of course.

His body took a step closer even as the words came out without another thought. “I am always going to be here, Sherlock. Don’t you get that yet?”

Sherlock looked to the side, cutting his eyes hard. In the barely-there flickering light, John saw them shine.

He took another half-step forward, a part of his brain starting to anxiously shudder over why. “Always.”

Sherlock’s left hand moved from John’s shoulder to his temple. His fingers threaded slowly through John’s hair. John shivered, frozen inside and out. That simple touch echoed down through all his nerves, like Sherlock touched him everywhere.

“I never did this. I thought I never would.”

John recognized what he saw in Sherlock’s eyes. He felt it rise in himself, a warmth from the bottom of his spine, and he took two steps back, fast. His heart screamed out in rebuke. It had been just a reaction of surprise. Shock, really. He was still shocked. Bloody fucking hell. Half his body tried to get away, the other half wanted to get closer and his mind felt like it was ringing like a bell.

Sherlock pulled his hands away, locked them behind his back. He swallowed, cleared his throat. He kept his eyes down, his gaze away from John’s. “Let’s get on with it, then, shall we?” he said, sounding terrifyingly like Mycroft.

When he started walking briskly away John took two long jogging steps and grabbed Sherlock’s arm. “Be careful. You made a promise.”

In the flickering light John saw blood rise to Sherlock’s sharp cheeks. “You promised, too.”

John wanted to say something else, something to make it okay, all of it okay. But it wasn’t, really. This was Sherlock and surely John had misread him completely. If he said something now it would just give Sherlock something sharp to stick in his gut. Because it wasn’t okay. He had to have misunderstood.

Without another word, Sherlock shook John off and, hunched against his collar, his hands in his coat pockets, he walked up the ramp and onto the unfamiliar street.

After a moment, John put his soldier on like a too-tight pair of shoes. Keeping his arms loose at his sides, he walked in Sherlock’s wake, a little to the left, letting Sherlock take the turn towards the dimly-lit strip of closed shops and pubs. 

John crossed the street and followed Sherlock parallel, pulling ahead then stopping to check a menu, dropping to tie his shoe, letting Sherlock turn down an alley.

He stood up, rubbing his hands together briskly. They couldn’t even be sure the Chemist was on the street. They could be up to this for days before the Chemist made a move. Trotting across the street, John took the alley parallel to the one Sherlock took. All his senses went on alert. Sherlock began whistling, a soft, meaningless meander of a tune, the sound a happy drunk might make, teetering his way home.

John heard the crunch of a boot behind him and he whirled. Not fast enough. He took the dart in his throat, just under his chin. He got out a half-shout, half gurgle, the world already spinning. There was a ridiculously tall and thin man, almost too thin to be living, oversized square glasses tight on the bridge of his nose. His yellow teeth flashed in a predatory smile.

John heard Sherlock’s running footsteps, saw the Chemist raise his dart gun. Then he toppled forward, flinching at the upcoming pavement but he never felt the impact.

***

John woke up because something dropped into his eye. He tried to pull away, blinking because it burned. But he was on his knees and his arms were bound behind his back and there were two sharp knees on his shoulders keeping him down. Long fingers grabbed his face, wrenched his head back.. More long fingers pried his eye open. He saw the drop of liquid shimmer then fall and it bloody well burned.

The long fingers and the hands they were on pushed John’s shoulders and he fell forward helplessly, twisting to land on his shoulder and not his face. Pain stung his skin, and he realized he wasn’t wearing any clothes. It was cold and his hands were bound and he was at the mercy of the Chemist. Who was supposed to snatch Sherlock but had taken John instead.

He blinked furiously, clearing the burning film from his eyes. In front of him was a bare foot, strangely familiar even with the dirt and scrapes on the toes, as if the owner of the foot had been dragged.

His captor hauled John back onto his knees. John blinked his sight clear again, and realized that bare foot was attached to Sherlock. Sherlock was tied to some sort of piece of machinery, his arms spread, shirtless and breathing hard, bruises on the left side of his face and shoulder and chest, misery and fear in his eyes.

“John.”

Whatever he’d witnessed the Chemist do had driven Sherlock onto the needle. And now here they were, participants not witnesses. After he’d risked and sacrificed so much to keep John safe.

“No.” The word came out muttered, strangled by the tightness of John’s throat. He jerked his shoulders but the bindings just cut deeper into his wrists. Why was he naked? He felt like snakes slithered under his skin, he had to move. Blood pounded in his ears and he heard his breath hitching.

“It’s the drug, John.”

John tried to focus on Sherlock but the world jittered. Whatever the Chemist had dropped in his eye lit a fire down every one of John’s nerves. He’d only felt this screaming sense of anticipation when there’d been a gun held to his head. His senses magnified everything: the oily smell of whatever abandoned garage held them, the way the skin over Sherlock’s ribs twitched as he breathed, the musty smell of the Chemist as he pulled down his overalls.

Too much naked male skin. John broke out all over in a feverish sweat. He felt the drops roll down his temple, down his side, over his ribs. He jerked again and again at his bonds, not caring about the pain. He got one knee under him, tried to stand, but the Chemist pushed him back down. John turned his head sharply, away from the half-hard penis poking toward his face. He choked down a gag.

When he felt the Chemist move away, John looked back. Sherlock curled his bound body as far from the Chemist as he could manage. The Chemist advanced on his with an antique hypodermic needle.

“No!”

He plunged the needle into Sherlock’s bare chest. Sherlock’s spine bowed. John jerked himself up, listing sideways -- how long had he been down on his knees, he could barely feel his feet. He rushed the Chemist but was too late. Whatever was in the hypo was now in Sherlock. Still he managed to stay up while he knocked the Chemist down. The antique hypodermic clattered across the cement floor while the Chemist laughed.

John’s head swirled and he stumbled back.

“Did you tell him what happens next?” The Chemist wheezed the words, halfway to his feet again. John had knocked off his glasses. He squinted at John. “How do you feel, Dr. Watson?”

He felt like someone was running a low-voltage current up from his feet. His muscles tensed and relaxed and tensed on their own. 

“John. Fight it. Fight!”

Sherlock’s voice hooked into John and pulled him around, twisted him physically so he stood over Sherlock’s bound body. Sherlock’s skin seemed to take on a golden glow. John’s nose flooded with a sweet spice, something that set his mouth watering. Shocked at the sudden aching hunger, no starvation, he stumbled back until a wall stopped him. He was seven steps from Sherlock and all that distance was a physical grinding in the pit of his stomach. 

Sherlock lifted his head, his neck and shoulders trembling with strain. “John. Please.”

He could not look away from that soft skin and the perfume it breathed. The tension, the anticipation in his blood pulsed quicker. That’s what he’d been waiting for. That’s what he was needing since the Chemist dosed him through the eyes. Whatever was in Sherlock, John must have in him. 

The pressure holding his wrists behind his back snapped loose. The Chemist stood beside him holding a box cutter but he could be fifty miles away. John didn’t care about him. He registered him peripherally. Only that sweet spice in Sherlock’s blood mattered.

He’d never before been this starved, cored out, so needful. 

“John. Fight it.” Sherlock stared at him with wide eyes. He kicked out, tangling his feet up with John’s. 

John toppled to one knee, the pain of impact so far away. “I can’t, Sherlock. I…” He raised his head, struggling to clear his mind long enough to see how frightened Sherlock was. 

Every one of John’s muscles tightened like he was a spring. Sherlock’s face faded into the golden glow he couldn’t resist.

“It’s okay, John. I know you tried.”

The permission cut him loose. John lunged onto Sherlock, grabbing at ribs. Wild with need, John sank his teeth into Sherlock’s belly. He felt one of his canines snag on Sherlock’s navel, then hot blood rolled across his tongue.

Sherlock shouted hoarsely. John rode through Sherlock’s bucking, clenching his jaw, nursing blood from the wound. It coated his mouth. His throat contracted, sucking it down. The emptiness inside filled, such satisfaction, such intense satisfaction. Sherlock didn’t just glow now, John did, too. He rose up on his knees, brain blanked with relief. But then ache that had been in his belly shifted lower. He put his hands on Sherlock’s ribs to steady himself, suddenly out of air. Suddenly, painfully hard, needing more now, more and more. It hurt worse, the needfulness, because of that momentary ease. Humiliation flooded him and he choked on the blood still in his throat. 

“John! John!”

John finally registered the repeat of his name. He couldn’t quite focus on Sherlock’s face, but he could hear his voice, understand the words. “You don’t want him, John. Who do you want?”

The Chemist grabbed John’s chin and crushed his mouth onto John’s.

“No!”

John wrenched away, falling over Sherlock’s body and crabbing backwards. The golden glow was gone. Everything’s outline was sharper, hard-edged. John shook with the need to rub himself on something. His balls were full of nails.

Sherlock spat in the Chemist’s face. “You didn’t have time to tailor the drug. You didn’t have his DNA. John!” 

John felt Sherlock’s voice against him, the words like fingers pressing hard. His body boiled and his brain wailed. 

“John!” 

Sherlock’s gaze reached down John’s throat, took hold of his cock from the inside. John arched, his hips chasing the phantom sensation.

“It’s me, John. You want me.” Sherlock stared right down into him. “Me.”

The Chemist slapped Sherlock, a backhand stroke that rocked Sherlock back against the iron machine he was bound to. John heard the crack of impact, Sherlock’s skull again metal. Sherlock lifted his head, eyes bleary, mouth trying to form words.

The Chemist reached across Sherlock’s body, clutched under John’s arms and hauled him close. The Chemist sank his teeth into John’s throat and his body reacted, his body didn’t care it just wanted so badly.

But Sherlock’s question echoed in John’s mind. Who do you want? Six months of drowning in loneliness and regret. Six months of not having. And now he knew exactly who he wanted.

A growl tore up John’s throat. He grabbed the Chemist’s neck and pushed him back, back against the assembly of iron pipes that held Sherlock. John bashed his head against the metal, feeling the skull give. Again and again, like thrusting home into a woman but never this good, never. He heard the crack and the shift in the bones, smelled the blood and brain matter, smelling like nothing else. John pushed the corpse aside, panting and gasping and shaking with need. It thundered through him, rolling and shuddering. Never like this before. Horrified, exhilarated, out of control, he heard his name in a voice that skimmed across his skin and then into it.

“John.”

John looked at his hands, smeared with blood. Spatters of blood across his chest and belly. Sherlock, bare-chested, hands tied, stretched out and shivering. His feet pushed against the concrete like somehow he could get away.

Sherlock went still except for his breathing. He panted almost as hard as John. For that moment John felt suspended in his body, fully present, painfully aware, his skin its own living thing with its own wants. His cock felt three feet long. 

Sherlock whispered, “Please.”

Please no or please yes? John didn’t care. “You. Dead. I.” The words stuttered out on shallow breaths. There was a physical crack in his brain. It reverberated down his spine and hooked in the cradle of his pelvis and he was straddling Sherlock, no memory of moving: one minute he was standing, the next pushing himself against Sherlock’s cold skin. His hands gripped Sherlock’s upper arms, feeling the muscles flex as Sherlock tugged at the ropes holding him. John pressed himself flush against Sherlock, his skin trying to unravel, wishing he could peel himself from his spine and engulf Sherlock in his skin, unbraid the muscles in his back, pull Sherlock close until Sherlock was in him, impaled on his jagged, broken ribs and they were pumping blood against each other, drowning in it.

John dragged his teeth across Sherlock, scraping up the taste of him. He bit down and sucked on the side of his neck and his hips ground himself against Sherlock’s stomach, feeling the heat of his still-bleeding bite. He shifted so he could slide himself against that burning stickiness, the friction making him shout.

Sherlock’s legs closed around him. His voice all ragged and choked chanted, “John Watson John Watson John Watson.” Then a long deep groan, his body shaking under John.

John flew apart, his entire body blowing wide. He dissolved into nothing, hovered there, then slammed back into his bones. Every muscle burned. His lungs burned. Gasping breaths scraped his raw throat. He collapsed, lying sideways over Sherlock’s body, his forehead pressed to the cold concrete.

His awareness returned with a jolt -- he was naked, sprawled across Sherlock, Jesus bloody Christ. John levered himself to his knees. Sherlock’s eyes were closed and his mouth open. Tears stood on his cheeks. His body was smeared with blood and… John looked down at himself: bloodier, striped and smeared with ejaculate. 

“We beat him, John. We beat the Chemist.”

Sherlock opened his eyes and John turned away, turned his whole body. He was naked, still so naked. “I’ll...cut you loose. Just…” He didn’t even know what to say. He found the Chemist’s box cutter. He turned back to Sherlock and realized how could he, he couldn’t stand...he was still completely naked, limp and goosefleshed. He stood there, the knife raised his hand.

Sherlock closed his eyes, and John’s chest melted with gratitude and respect. He sawed through the rope. Sherlock lowered his arms with a groan and sat up, rubbing the muscles.

John saw the Chemist had piled their clothes by the door. He’d been unconscious and the Chemist had stripped him, tossed his clothes aside carelessly. His underwear, his socks. John’s stomach clenched and rolled.

With his back to Sherlock John pulled on his pants. For some reason he couldn’t put on the underwear, as if they were filthy because the Chemist touched them. He brought Sherlock his shirt and socks and shoes. The buttons on the white shirt were mostly gone. The material of John’s pullover was as cold as the floor. 

Sherlock stood up and tugged his shirt on. He pulled it close, fumbling with the few buttons left then giving up. 

“This is what you saw.” John barely recognized his voice, hoarse and scratchy. “The Chemist and the woman he held hostage.”

Sherlock nodded briefly. He didn’t look up. “The drugs made her attack the victims, bite them,” Sherlock’s voice wavered a little, “for the other drug. Then, she and the Chemist…” Sherlock shrugged. “After, they killed the victims.”

John thought that one through carefully. His brain felt wrapped in fog. “He thought I would…?” He looked at the Chemist’s corpse, shocked by what he’d done. He hadn’t just broken the man’s skull. He’d broken his neck.

“And then kill me.” Now Sherlock did glance up, a wry smile quirking half of his mouth. “An extravagant sort of revenge. But we beat him.”

The statement rang hollow and meaningless through John’s foggy brain. Remorse and horror swamped him. “No. Sherlock. I r-r-” He couldn’t even force the word out of his throat.

Sherlock’s head came up and he frowned imperiously. “You most certainly did not.”

John stared at the fierce denial on Sherlock’s face. “You said please.”

“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t move his gaze from John’s, so intense that John could not look away.

“It was please--”

“Yes.”

John blew out a breath between clenched teeth. “It was the drug--”

“No.”

John cut his eyes away, overwhelmed. His world was cracking apart, he was already falling.

Sherlock cleared his throat. “I will have Mycroft take you back to Lon--”

“No.” John said it ferociously. “No.” He looked up, saw the relief in Sherlock’s eyes. “No. Never. I am with you. Always.” His voice cracked. Sherlock’s face blurred and John turned away. All of this, all of it, too much. “Always.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said again.

The word struck John physically, went through him like a bullet. His memory repeated an echo of Sherlock chanting his name. John Watson John Watson John Watson. He didn’t understand why his heart hurt like it was breaking. Just all of it, too much.

Sherlock moving around behind him brought John back to a semblance of sense. “I’ll call Mycroft. I hope he’s shitting himself in fear.”

That brought out a laugh, something John didn’t think he had left inside him. He felt scraped out and hollow, just exhaustedly blank. He listened to Sherlock’s rustling through their discarded coats, watched Sherlock put his on, even though the right sleeve was soaked through and spattered with mud. He had out the burner cell.

“Wait.” He couldn’t just call Mycroft like nothing had happened, just a run of the mill brush with death at the hands of a madman. “What…?” But he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to ask.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “What do we do now?”

The bland superiority made John clench his fist. He used it to gesture at it all -- the dead Chemist, the cut ropes. “Things have changed. Quite a lot.”

Sherlock cocked his head, a smile tugging at his mouth. “Have they really?”

Leave it to Sherlock Holmes to play blase about being fucked by his best friend in bondage in the bite mark I made. John straighten his spine. “Well, you aren’t dead.”

That wiped away the smirk. “I am sincerely sorry, John. I thought I was protecting you. I was really protecting me.” 

Sherlock didn’t look away. He maintained calm eye contact, waiting for what? John couldn’t guess. With a shrug, John said, “You’ve done worse.”

Sherlock laughed.

“Get Mycroft here. I’m sticky,” John wiped his palms on his pants, “and I smell ungodly.”

“And there are more of Moriarty’s cast offs to be cleansed from the earth.” 

John put on his socks and shoes while Sherlock coldly told Mycroft they “needed an extraction.” He found a wooden crate, turned it upside down. His knees protested as he eased himself to sit on it.

Sherlock put his shoes and socks on, too. He walked over and draped John’s coat over his shoulders. “You look cold.”

“Thank you.”

Sherlock took two steps away, then stopped. He turned and looked down at John. “I want to do that again.”

John felt himself blush, but didn’t turn away. “Just because every woman in Britain thinks I’m one-night-stand material doesn’t mean you’re getting out of this.” Then, because this entire conversation was so absurd, John asked, “Do you want it with the biting and the bondge?”

Sherlock pffted. “No.” He took three steps away, then stopped. “Maybe the bondage.”

And this was what he thought he’d lost. Absurd adventures with this fascinating man who never ceased to surprise, to amaze, and now…”I’ll never let you tie me up, no way.”

“Indeed. If I tell you to stand still, you will bloody well stand still.”

John ran a shaking hands through his hair. He stood up slowly and walked just as slowly to Sherlock, until they were standing close enough that John had to cock his head to look Sherlock in the eye. But he stared into Sherlock’s eyes until a touch of color rose on Sherlock’s cheeks.

“John Watson,” Sherlock whispered.

John shuddered, thinking but not saying I will do anything with you, to be with you, always.

Outside, sirens rang. Engines revved and tires squealed. 

John didn’t move. He didn’t look away.

Neither did Sherlock.


End file.
